Scaling up investments in private sector-led agricultural value chain development in Ghana

Grow Africa in partnership with the Ghanaian Private Enterprise Federation (PEF) hosted a stakeholder consultative meeting in Accra, Ghana, on boosting private sector investment in the agriculture value chains in the country. The meeting provided a platform for long-term engagements on scaling up investments in private sector-led agricultural value chain development.

Agriculture in Ghana consists of a variety of agricultural products and is an established economic sector, and provides employment to about 60 percent of the population on a formal and informal basis. Agriculture has long been recognised in the country as the critical sector that could help achieve the much needed global goal of poverty reduction, in a much more sustainable way.

The meeting was designed as a tool to enhance dialogue and consultation among agricultural actors in order to propose common solutions for sustainable agriculture strategies in the country. Which should foster a better governance of the sector and offer an innovative forum to exchange experiences, information and knowledge about agriculture development.

Grow Africa is currently working with the PEF to expand the rice and cassava stakeholder platforms to strengthen and boost private sector investment through a vast network of national, regional and multinational companies that it can leverage for the benefit of value chain actors in the country.

As part of the consultations in Ghana, the meeting aimed at getting private sector investors in the rice and cassava platforms up to date on the Grow Africa strategy moving forward. As well as identify systemic barriers hindering agriculture investment in the country, for the purpose of addressing them, to accelerate private sector investment. The CEO of PEF reiterated the need for private sector enterprises to be more formally organised. Also, other business development studies has suggested a structure for the National Apex Agribusiness Chambers which may include people who are not into agribusiness but can help open doors to help improve agribusinesses in the respective regions in Ghana.

As part of a wider consultation to establish a multi-stakeholder platform in Ghana, Grow Africa phase two will be integrating and mapping out activities based on the CAP-F framework. The private sector consultative meeting sets the parameter to clearly spell out commitments from all stakeholders and include a mutual accountability framework.

During the meeting, an MoU was officially signed between PEF and Grow Africa, the agreement will put in place the framework for collaboration and a vehicle to drive Grow Africa’s in country activities.

The CAP-F framework seeks to involve the private sector in business cases development and clearly lay out the opportunities for potential commercial benefit for the investors.

In this context Grow Africa’s in country activities in Ghana, will incorporate and address a clear path to commercial benefits based on identified barriers and challenges of all the actors along a specific value chain.

The way forward would focus on implementing the CAP-F, which will involve the setting up of CAP-F secretariat in Ghana, incorporating into existing agri-business structures and apex body, in this case PEF as outlined in the MoU.